where the only stress is caused by a vain attempt to use up all the yarn I've acquired ... or to put it another way ... Hello, I'm Mary-Lou, and I haven't thought about knitting for at least two minutes ...!
Fellow addicts, feel free to contact me and sympathise, at mlqknits AT gmail DOT com, or you can find me at www.ravelry.com (user name mlqknits)

Note that crochet terminology is English. US terms are given in brackets. Also note that tension is not terribly important for this piece. It should be loose to allow for the springiness of the yarn, so although the recommended needles given for Veritas Colorado are 4.5 - 5mm, I opted to use 6mm to give it a bit of drape.

With ribbon yarn, and 6mm needles, cast on 2 stitches by the e-wrap method

-Row 1: Knit

-Row 2: (K1, K1tbl) in the first stitch, K1 – (3 stitches)

-Row 3: (K1, K1tbl) in the first stitch, K to end – (4 stitches)

Repeat Row 3 till you have 10 stitches altogether

-Nexr Row: K5, yo, K5 – (11 stitches)

-Next Row: K5, yo, K1, yo, K5 – (13 stitches)

-Next Row: K5, yo, K3, yo, K5 – (15 stitches)

Continue in this way working 2 more stitches each time between the yo’s until you have just enough yarn to cast off.Cast off loosely.

Now work the edging: With crochet hook, and cotton DK, starting from the cast off edge, work 1 dc (US, work 1 sc) into each cast off stitch across the cast off edge, then work 1 dc (US, work 1 sc) into each garter ridge along each of the 2 short sides.Join to the first dc with a slip stitch. Turn. (the remainder of the edging will only be worked along the short sides)

... or how a little knowledge of Geometry can be a Good Thing, especially for Stash-Busters ...

Recently, I was doing a spot of stash-busting, and I decided to knit my sister a little shawl from some ribbon-y yarn in stash. It's a straightforward matter to knit a triangular shawl, especially in garter stitch, and we probably all know how it's done ... cast on 2 stitches, and knit them, then on each following row, increase one stitch at the beginning of the row, usually by knit 1, knit 1 tbl, then knit to the end of the row. When the resulting triangle is big enough for what we want, we cast off. So far, not very difficult ... but how do we know if we have enough yarn for what we want to do?

And that's when Geometry can be our Best Friend ... I had four balls of Veritas 'Colorado' (bought in Veritas in Mons, Belgium), that's this stuff here

no yardage on the ball band, though I would guess it was around about the 60 yard mark, it's a type of slightly glittery 'railroad' ribbon, with little tufts along the edges, and when knitted up, it looks rather like this

I had originally intended to knit a scarf with it, but decided to be a bit cleverer ... hence the shawl, but I wasn't really sure just how far the 240 yards would go, and I didn't want to end up with something too small to be of any use. Enter Pythagoras, and one of the only two formulas that most people know (the other one is e=mc^2)! Knitting the shawl in the way I've described gives you an isosceles triangle (two sides the same length, two angles the same), but more importantly, the angle between the two short sides is a right angle, like this

and once I knew how big a triangle one ball would make (12 inches on each of the short sides and about 17 inches on the long side), it was a relatively simple matter to work out that 4 balls would give me a triangle twice as long on each side (ie 24 inches for each short side, and about 34 inches on the long side), like this

each right-angled triangle in the diagram represents one ball of yarn. Interestingly, to make that triangle three times as long on every side as the original, you need 9 balls

... I will leave it to you to work out how many balls you need to knit a triangle 4 or 5 times as long on each side, but here's the sequence - 1, 4, 9, ..., ... - see if you can fill in the missing numbers - no, there is no prize for this (just a sense of satisfaction).

That's all well and good, but what if I'd had only 2, 3 or 5 balls (or some other number of balls of yarn not in that sequence?) Thanks to knowing a bit about right-angled triangles and their properties, I can work that out too, based on the dimensions of a triangle made from one ball of yarn, with the aid of a calculator that can do square roots, or using MS-Excel.

And just so that you can do it too - here's how: Use your calculator to find out the square root of the number of balls you have, eg. the square root of two is a nasty number that goes on for ever, but the first few digits are 1.414213562 (in case you're interested, this type of number is called an irrational number), but you can round it to something more reasonable, say 1.41 (to 2 dp). Now multiply the sides of the triangle you get from 1 ball of yarn by 1.41, ie. if the sides from 1 ball are 10 inches, 10 inches, and 14.14 inches, then 2 balls will make a triangle with sides 14.14 inches, 14.14 inches and 20 inches.

If you want to do the same thing in Excel, type this formula into the first cell (cell A1) in the top left corner of the spreadsheet, '=sqrt(x)' (leave out the quote marks, and replace x with the number of balls of yarn). That gives you the multiplier you need. Now type into another cell '=A1*y' where y is the length of one of the two short sides of the original triangle, and hit enter. Do the same sort of thing in another cell for the long side of the triangle, and now you know how big your finished triangle will be.

(ETA - It occurs to me that some people don't have access to either the right kind of calculator, or MS-Excel, so just for you, here are the square roots for the numbers 1 - 10 (where these are irrational, I've simplified them to 2 decimal place which should be quite sufficient for most purposes)

Pattern for the dress is 'Lacy Days of Summer' by Mari Lynn Patrick, from Crochet Today July/August 2007, and I made a hair-band using the remains of the yarn, and the stitch pattern from the dress edging.

Main yarn used is Plassard Tahiti (a light DK / sport-weight variegated cotton) bought last summer in France, and the contrast yarn is a cotton DK with some viscose, and came from Lidl a couple of years back (remember the 3 50g balls for £1.50 offer?) I amended the pattern very slightly as the original pattern for the skirt has 10 increased treble stitches (US double crochet) per increase round, and this would have made the skirt too full, so I opted for 8 stitches.

Also note that the sleeves are quite difficult to seam onto the bodice, the rows don't match up exactly, and have to be stretched to fit, so whip stitching or mattress stitching was not really an option. I decided to get around the problem by lapping the two edges, and back-stitching along the chain edge of the bodice, detail below

... Approximately 30 balls of assorted eyelash yarns, and a 6mm circular needle gets you a blanket approximately 56" by 56" (142cm x 142cm). Double crochet (US equiv - single crochet) edging to firm it up (technical term!) a bit. Knitted a centre band about 40 stitches (11 - 12 inches) wide, until I'd used up 5 balls, then divided all my remaining yarns in half so I could make the design symmetrical, picked up 180 - 190 stitches along one long edge of the centre band, and knitted off all one half of the yarn in stripes, then repeated down the other long edge. 3 rounds of double crochet (US single) to finish (each round takes about a ball of yarn). Am feeling very virtuous in a kind of "make do and mend" sort of a way.

Oh dear, I’ve been an extremely remiss blogger recently.I mainly put this down to lack of daylight, and returning to work all in one hitUnlike some S.A.D. sufferers, I don’t get depressed, but I do get tired – think hibernation mode, and you get the general idea - and although the creativity didn’t go away, I somehow didn’t feel an urgent need to write about it as well (though you will find photos of some of what I’ve been doing sprinkled through this posting).

On the needles, I have a jacket in Pingouin Iroise, which I am making up as I go along (with a certain amount of help from Ann Budd, though I think that her stitch calculations for set in sleeve heads leave something to be desired, so I having to do a certain amount of re-working for these). Photos to follow anyway, when I have got this bit right

Before I start on the posting I’ve had in my head for about the last month, I would like to thank the people who e-mailed me to check I was OK (especially if I’ve been rude enough not to reply to the e-mails).What lovely people you are – I am really touched by your kindness in thinking of me.

So to the main theme of today’s posting, which was mainly triggered by a piece of music that turned up in a recent episode of the new series of the BBC’s new series of ‘Life on Mars’.If I were to ask the very simple question ‘David or Donny?’, I think I would get one of three answers:

-David

-Donny

-Who?

If you picked the last one, then I am guessing that you are under 40, as almost any blogger over that age will know exactly who I am talking about.I am also prepared to bet that no-one would answer ‘both’, it’s a bit like asking ‘Marmite or Bovril’ (sorry to overseas readers, I don’t know if you have equivalent products, but for the record, I’d answer ‘Bovril’).

Suffice it to say anyway that I heard the opening bars of ‘How can I be sure?’, and in a moment I was 13 years old again, and it was really 1972.Damn good song, even so many years later, and that led me on to thinking quite hard about the music that I actually like.

James (who recently celebrated his 18th birthday in traditional style, by being taken to the pub to purchase his ‘first pint’) has often remarked that the songs I like sound the same, but for a very long time I didn’t understand what he meant.

One of the things I did with my redundancy money was to buy a large capacity iPod – you may say that this was a great waste when I didn’t know how long I would be unemployed.I agree, but I wanted to have something to show for it, as otherwise the money was only going to go on helping the OddBall family to stay afloat – and of course this is a worthy aim, if not very exciting.

To date, I have something like 1800 songs on it – obviously I don’t like them all, but I have so much space on it that it will be a long time before I have to make any hard decisions about what to keep, and what to discard (approximately another 3 - 4000 songs, I think .... it’s a bit like having SABLE).For those of you who are actually interested in such things, here’s an Excel file with the full list.

Meanwhile about 10% of those songs get my top rating, so in the interests of trying to discover what James meant about the music I like, I took some notes one day of what the machine played when it randomly selected from my top rated songs

Midnight at the Oasis / Maria Muldaur

Everybody Hurts / REM

Cruel to be Kind / Nick Lowe

Visions of China / Japan

How to save a Life / The Fray

Don’t Fear the Reaper / Blue Oyster Cult

This Masquerade / The Carpenters

Wicked Game / Chris Isaak

Dance Away / Bryan Ferry

Art for Art’s Sake / 10cc

Minor Swing / Django Reinhardt

Kiss on my List / Hall & Oates

Pink Moon / Nick Drake

Don’t Speak / No Doubt

High / Lighthouse Family

Neon Lights / Kraftwerk

Don’t you forget about me / Simple Minds

Could it be Magic / Barry Manilow

One Way Night / Metro

Rikki don’t lose that Number / Steely Dan

The Sleepwalkers / Level 42

All Cried Out / Alison Moyet

Atomic / Blondie

Lovely Day / Bill Withers

Life on Mars / David Bowie

A fairly representative selection I think (even if it does mean I have to admit to liking Barry Manilow!).But what is it that’s the linking factor? - this has taken me the best part of 2 weeks to figure out, and in the end the answer is so simple, it’s laughable.

The majority are from the mid 70s – mid 80s, much as you would expect, given my age, but not all (in fact, the selection covers songs spread over about 40 years).Some can sing, some can’t (I shall leave you to decide who).Some are upbeat, and some most definitely not (ditto)There are many factors that link some of the songs, but only one (I think) links them all, and I think it is that all of them appear to be songs in a minor key.

And here we are - back to the beginning of my post, not depressed, but definitely living in a minor key at the moment.I spotted this in a posting from Crazy Aunt Purl recently, and it probably sums me up pretty well (though I could wish she hadn’t used the word ‘Weeble’, no matter how aptly descriptive!)

“Taurus folks have a chatty happiness that instantly attracts me. I know that like Cancers, ya'll have your little homebody issues sometimes but I love the way you move through life with a happy medium always perched solidly in your middle. You teeter to one end, roll to the other and yet somehow always manage to get upright in the end. Much like a Weeble! Weebles wobble but they do not fall down. That is my Taurus folks in a nutshell. You have a teensy bit of teeter in your chart, there are family obligations pulling you in all directions and some strangely misplaced expectations from your friends to look forward to, but in the end (which is to say, at the end of March through all of Mid-April) you will once again find yourself wobbling back up to the middle, where you and your Weeble-Taurus goodness will find a solid middle ground.”

Daylight is nearly back, and I’m feeling a lot more communicative today, so roll on British Summer Time, only a week to go ...

I suspect it's now common knowledge amongst local mummies about my sluttish attitude to housework (as in 'don't do it'). Emily & her friend arrived back on Monday just before I had planned to hoover the worst bits, so everywhere seemd to be covered either in bits of fibre, or odd beads, or wire trimmings. Oh well, will just have to save this up for Remote Knitter's meme on '5 Things Feminism has done for me' (I promise I haven't forgotten, just haven't got around to it yet, and still thinking what I want to say). Then they wanted to go upstairs (a definite no-go area for visitors, IMO), so I had to rush around and make sure all doors were shut, in case of avalanches ... drat!

Never mind, on to the more interesting stuff. I have several hauls to show and tell:

4 skeins of Lorna's Laces 'Lion & Lamb' - and before anyone asks, I am not going to make Clapotis with it. Don't know what I want to do with it either, but ... knowing this walks out of the shop pretty quick, decided I would get it now against the awful possiblility of ever running out of yarn ... hmmm.

3 skeins of ArtYarns 'Silk Rhapsody', this has a very fine glittery thread in it - have plans for some lace knitting, though as yet pattern still to be decided.

Tilli Tomas 'Disco Lights'. I could not get the colours to come right on this one at all, they are much, much darker (Ruby & Sapphire) and (if possible) more vivid. Emily & Holly both want a scarf like the one I knitted for Grandma Philomena, let's see if I can get them done in time for X--s.

(Small roll of drums, I know this is the one you've all been waiting for ...!) ;)

Having handed over a large bag of stuff to Ruth, I felt a little quite a lot less guilty about immediately replacing the weight loss ...

Jamie 'Possum' - Yvonne kindly gave me a couple of balls in the oatmeal colour, and having decided they passed the 'MLQ nose test', I added these ones to the haul. I don't very much enjoy doing fair-isle, but I do like slip stitch patterns (more texture), so I'm thinking tank top in (possibly) waffle stitch, or similar. Good yardage on this one (130 metres or so to the ball), might even be a 40s style cardi.

Lang 'Silkdream' (12 balls) - this is another one I had colour repro difficulties with, should be a much rustier red (think dark paprika, or chilli). Planning a slinky tunic in this.

Lang 'Mille Colori' (15 balls). John had a lovely sweater from M&S in Shetland Wool, all in stripes of black, grey and blue - it was his favourite, and was known familiarly in the Odd Ball household as the 'Badger' sweater - after much abuse wear, it finally gave out at the elbows, and I couldn't match the colours well enough to darn it for him. So ... after much searching, I decided that this is the replacement 'Badger', though there's a lot more blue (lots of different blues in fact), and not very much black/grey. This again is for X--s, and I have started knitting it already - I've decided on garter stitch for welts, rather than the more usual rib, because I like the way it breaks up the striping, and it will be a gansey style, but without dropped shoulders. The jury is still out on whether to go for round or v-neck, but I have about 10 inches of knitting in the round (he likes long bodies to his sweaters), before I have to decide, also think I may knit the sleeves to the armhole, and then finish the whole thing in the round, so my other decision is whether to go for round-yoke, set-in, or raglan. Shall consult my trusty copy of 'The Opinionated Knitter'. Oh I do like making it up as I go along ... and just for once, I am going to be good, and take proper notes as I go.

4 balls of Elle 'True Blue' indigo-dyed cotton from Yvonne's spare haul (Thanks, Yvonne!). Have not tried out denim yarn before, so I'm not clear about how the shrinkage works - if anyone has any experience, please feel free to impart it! James will not wear much that's hand-knitted (he says it's not cool - presumably this is in the Boy World), but I think he would wear a scarf, and possibly a beanie.

Trendsetter 'Dune' - perfect for Steek Boas!

2 skeins Cherry Tree Hill 'Glitter Alpaca'. Some more lace knitting for the winter. Have just got hold of 'Knitters' magazine today, and there are some lovely things, including a terrific article on Jane Sowerby and her book on victorian lace, which I think may go on my wish list for X----, along with the Knitters book of '25 Jackets for Work & Play', a Boye Needlemaster from Woolly Workshop, and an umbrella swift from Handweavers Studio.

A lucet for Emily from here - she doesn't much like knitting, but she quite enjoys trying out different craft ideas. She also bought a braiding kit, which I think is Kimihimo braiding?

Then we get down to Holly's little haul ... a hank of Colinette bought at Ally Pally, a couple of balls of yarn from the Knit & Relax table, and a remaindered ball of Wendy Fusion (for 75p) in C&H Fabrics. Holly has also been lucky enough to be given a small knitting frame, so we are going to set it up this weekend, and see how we get on with it. If she likes it, I might also dig out the Bond, and she can apply her new-found knowledge to that.

And that's just about it ... there are a few other bits & bobs I bought, but these are not for public display at the moment, suffice it to say that there will be some new items appearing on MLQKnits in the next few days ... and certain little girls have got some other X--s pressies sorted (clue - Ruth bought 60 of them, and the other one involves needles in a holder)

Oh, one more thing - in answer to the burning question posed by Wye Sue as to what to do with yards of finger knitting - when you've finished tying up the children with it, you can 'crochet' with your fist to make quite a decent sized boa ... it kept Emily warm all the way home!

... so here's a small stash-buster to celebrate. I think I shall put off the threatened stash-flashing for a day or two ...

You'll need about 13 - 15 metres of some nice heavy yarn, viscose or silk would be good - in this case, I've used Louisa Harding 'Glisten'. You also need some thin wire, a pair of end-caps, a dab of suitable glue, a couple of jump-rings and a necklace fastening. Take the yarn, and make a skein about 20 inches in length (I used the arms on the carver chair in my dining room). You should get 13 or so 'wraps'. Bind the skein at one end very tightly with some thin wire, and do the same at the other end. Trim the wire, and the ends of the skein. Put a dab of glue inside one of the end-caps, and push the end of the skein into it. Do the same at the other end, and allow it all to set. Attach jump-rings, and necklace fastening. Voila!